FLEMING ON THE SALT RANGE OF THE PUNJATJB. 195 



most indistinct, vegetable impressions. Above this, and often in 

 alternating beds of various thickness, is a light-coloured calcareous 

 sandstone, weathering to a fawn-colour. The thickness of Nos. 2 

 and 3 taken together may be on an average about 400 feet. Above 

 this occurs a variegated dark red sandstone, alternating with red, 

 green, and purple shales, from 150 to 200 feet thick (No. 4). 

 Concretionary nodules of copper-glance have been found in these 

 shales, but no vein of ore has yet been discovered, and the concre- 

 tionary nodules occur in greatest quantity in the clay formed from 

 the disintegration of the shales. Resting on the shales (at Moosa- 

 khail, south side of the Salt Range, twenty-eight miles E. of Kalabagh) 

 is a very hard splintery limestone (No. 5), containing irregular masses 

 of hornstone or flint. Its lower part is indistinctly stratified and is 

 much fissured ; but the upper part of the deposit is more distinctly 

 stratified. This limestone varies from a dirty white semicrystalline 

 appearance to a steel-grey colour, and some of the beds are black 

 and argillaceous. It has frequently an oolitic structure ; it is 

 generally foetid on being brmsed ; and the specimens examined 

 afforded no magnesia. At Moosakhail this rock is 200 or 300 feet 

 thick. Producti, Sph'iferi, TerebratulcB, Echinodermata (fragments 

 of a large Cidarisi), Corals, &c., abound*. Encrinites are scarce in 

 this locality, but some fifteen miles further east they are abundant 

 and large. This palaeozoic limestone, resembling in its fossils the 

 Carboniferous limestone of Europe, has little of the appearance of 

 the regular Mountain-limestone of North Britain (of Fifeshire for 

 example) ; and in the shales and sandstones above and below it 

 nothing like Sigillarice and other Coal-plants have been met with. 

 The Productus-limestone first appears in the Salt Range about thirty 

 miles west of Find Dadun Khan, gradually increasing in thickness to 

 the westward, whilst the beds below it diminish and become less 

 distinct. Above this fossiliferous limestone is a series of soft yel- 

 lowish or brown sandstone, generally calcareous, bituminous shales, 

 loaded with pyrites, and argillaceous thin-bedded limestones (No. 6). 

 Flat masses of lignite (coniferous wood) occur in the sandstones and 

 shales, and in a soft argillaceous sandstone Dr. A. Fleming obtained 

 a Fern. The lignite in many places is converted into coke by 

 the heat evolved during the spontaneous decomposition of the iron- 

 pyrites in the shales. From these shales chalybeate and sulphureous 

 springs issue, many of the latter being tepid. One of these indicated a 

 temperature of 96° Fahr., that of the air being 69°. Its water gave a 

 dense black precipitate with a solution of acetate of lead ; and it depo- 

 sited on the rocks over which it flowed a crust of sulphur. The author 

 observes that some few fossil shells occur in series No. 6, and that 

 he considers it probable that it is, for perhaps the greater part, of 



* In 1841 Dr. W. Jameson visited the Salt Range and Kalabagh, and an 

 account of his geological investigations appears in the Journal of the Asiatic 

 Society of Bengal, N. S. vol. xii. p. 204, where it will be seen that Dr. Jameson also 

 observed the occurrence of Productus and Spirifer in limestone, which, however, 

 he considered to lie below the Rock-salt. 



